This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Reading Putin's Tea Leaves

(I apologize for Word Press's failure to stick to one font color!)Recently a friend emailed me the link http://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/to an article by a distinguished American historian, Emanuel Wallerstein, about an interview given by Hamid Karzai to the French paper Le Monde that laid out very clearly Karzai’s position on relations with the U.S. going forward, but which the New York Times only mentioned in passing.Among other things, it revealed that if Karzai continues to refuse to sign the Status of Forces Agreement to regulate the presence of American military after the official pullout, President Obama is considering the possibility that it could just as well be signed by another Afghan official! Evidently, the slide away from legality affects not only drone strikes.

Wallerstein’s comment came to me just as I was beginning a several days long effort to report - in lieu of the New York Times - on Vladimir Putin’s year-end speech to the Russian Duma and guests from business and industry.

American pundits pour over every Presidential speech like divines reading tea leaves. But although the United States shares the planet with 200 other nations, they studiously ignore the speeches of other leaders, depriving Americans of the ability to evaluate their government’s foreign policy decisions.

Washington does not so much fear voters hearing the other side’s story, as discovering its worldview. Americans must never know that most foreign leaders truly believe dialogue and negotiation are preferable to confrontation, an attitude that goes back to the early days of socialist thought. Whatever the failings of central planning, the belief that war is bad is inseparable from the desire to improve the human condition. Our culture has become so twisted that we see every Other as a potential threat, to be punished if he disagrees with us. Recent events in Ukraine illustrate this attitude at its most shocking: American diplomats in the streets of Kiev warning the government that if it does not cave in to protesters’ demands to sign a trade deal with Europe, sanctions would follow!

For a century and a half the Other has been anyone concerned with equity. Now it is purported to be religious fanaticism, however, Islamists are okay if they are pro-capitalist, as shown in the current embarrassing situation in Syria. The conflict between the 1% and the 99% is as real today as it was when Marx and Engels wrote ‘Das Capital’; however it’s no longer about central planning versus entrepreneurship, rather it is about consumerism and the rape of the planet versus civilization.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin unleashed cowboy capitalism in Russia, but Putin has increasingly realized that this is a terrible system. While supporting entrepreneurship, he defends the idea that government is the primary purveyor of human solidarity, as clearly reflected in his end of the year speech. You can read it at http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/6402. Here are a few excerpts, starting with two basic ideas:

“Our Constitution brings together two fundamental priorities – the supreme value of rights and freedoms of citizens and a strong state, emphasizing their mutual obligation to respect and protect each other. But life does not stand still, and no constitutional process can ever be regarded as final.” The necessary dialectic between a strong state and individual freedoms, as well as the common sense notion that constitutions need to evolve with society are diametrically opposed to the American canon in which the constitution is immutable and a strong state is seen as incompatible with individual freedoms.

Recognizing that the Russian economy is inefficient and that some technology is harmful, Putin called for a modern technical and environmental regulatory system, albeit sensitive to economic complexities. Admitting that the Russian slowdown was due less to the global economic crisis than to internal failings such as low labor productivity and corruption, he called for high quality professional education, a flexible labor market, a good investment climate and modern technology, as do routinely the Presidents of European welfare states. (Today, Angela Merkel was sworn in for a third term and pledged to uphold the welfare state...)

Turning to education, the Russian president stressed the need for increased mobility between the members of the Russian Federation, noting that the government had raised salaries in education and healthcare in order to attract top students, but condemning exorbitant prices for student dorms. Similarly with housing construction, he called on local authorities to make more land available and lessen the time it takes to get a building permit, while warning developers who fail to begin construction on schedule that they would lose the land.

With respect to Russia’s mandatory health insurance, it should fully coverthe provision of free medical assistance, but patients should be clear as to what they are entitled to free of charge. Meanwhile the quality of social services should be improved with more efficient spending.

Putin defined the welfare state as consisting of “the mutual responsibility of the state, the business community, and every Russian citizen’, and called for greater participation of civil society in local government.

Undoubtedly, some Americans would find this speech disturbing: the government appears to be organizing everything, to the point of putting a time frame on actions to be taken by the Duma and declaring that once a decision is taken, it should be implemented. (Imagine Obama doing that!) But in today’s ultra-complicated world, does the ordinary citizen really benefit from an economic and political free-for-all that allows the few to disregard the many?

“The Russians — in the attitude passed down from czar to party boss to this elected autocrat — must be instructed, talked down to, disciplined, kept in the dark, managed, manipulated. In Russia, what is called “Western-style democracy” leads to childish blithering and disorder. Russians know this in their hearts, supposedly, which is why they vote for Daddy Putin.”

Later, however, Keller criticizes Ms Gessen for ‘having faith in the Russian people”......

Recognizing that “Putin did institute economic reforms that spurred growth, curbed inflation and got people actually paying their taxes”, he nonetheless accuses him of “allowing runaway corruption and largely reversing the privatization of major industries.” To the unbiased reader it seems obvious that the Russian leader put certain companies back under government control because of corruption!

In his 2012 review, Keller accuses Putin of “nationalist bluster in foreign relations; the reimposition of state controls over the resource-based economy; the jailing or killing of political opponents and electoral manipulation.” Saying you want to cooperate with the rest of the world but that you will defend your nation’s integrity is nationalist bluster, really? And the killing of political opponents is okay if it’s carried out by drones by not by a hired thug?

Referring to Masha Gessen’s book: “‘Even the most casual Putin-watcher has marveled at his narcissism, manifested in his odd habit of inviting cameras to record him bare-chested on horseback, swimming the butterfly stroke in a Siberian river, scuba diving and collecting skin samples from whales, among other stunts’. Gessen traces his self-absorption back to his youth.“ Does it not seem more likely that Putin wants to be seen as a vigorous, healthy outdoors man because the Soviet Union was ruled for several decades by octogenarians? Indeed, Putin called on the legislators to encourage active lifestyles, and to:

Tax on-line purchases;

Finance long-term scientific and technological research;

Create a national professional qualifications council, and a national jobs database;

Make country life more attractive by building modern infrastructures and draft proposals for development in what have heretofore been single-industry towns, targeting support for small and medium businesses;

Oh and by the way make it possible for employers to pay all their taxes at once, while giving tax breaks to regions that invest in industrial and technology parks.

Putin proposed that people who have broken immigration rules should not be able to enter the country for three to ten years. But businesses should be able to apply for licenses to employ foreigners.

Both Inspections and offshore commercial activity should be better regulated and the latter taxed. While recognizing the need for qualified professionals, Putin wants them supervised, stating that there should be no ‘executive comfort zones’: business executives should be criminally liable for perjury.

Calling for better action against money-laundering, Putin also wants depositors’ money to be protected from failing banks.

Reflecting Russia’s reorientation toward the Pacific Ocean as a member of the BRICS nations that include China and India, he stressed the importance of developing the country’s vast Far East and Eastern Siberia.

Noting the increasingly contradictory nature of global development, Vladimir Putin stressed Russia’s historical responsibility as one of the key guarantors of global and regional stability that consistently espouses a value-based approach to international relations.

“We have always been proud of our nation. But we do not claim to be any sort of superpower with a claim to global or regional hegemony; we do not encroach on anyone’s interests, impose our patronage on anyone, or try to teach others how to live their lives.” Noting Russia’s many centuries of experience, “not of not so-called tolerance, neutered and barren, but the actual modern, life of different peoples within the framework of a single state,” he pledged to defend international law. (There are currently 160 nationalities within the Russian Federation.)

With its usual ethnocentric bias, the European and American press take every opportunity to criticize Russia for its testy tolerance of gay life styles, overlooking Putin’s far more numerous followers in the developing world.According to Putin, “the destruction of traditional values from above leads to negative consequences for society and is anti-democratic when it is contrary to the will of the majority.”

Confirming what I have written in recent blogs, Putin emphasized the importance “not only of material existence but also (religion and) spirituality, the values of humanism and global diversity.”

Finally, referring to the situation in Syria, he said the agreement to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons confirmed the indispensable role of the U.N., and together with the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program showed that “any international problem can and should be resolved exclusively through political means, without resorting to forceful actions that are rejected by most nations in the world.”

We may never know all the behind-the-scenes negotia-tions over Ukraine, however the entire thrust of Putin’s speech lends credence to his assertion that Russia wants a three-way negotiated solution. Even if we assume that Putin does not believe his own lofty words, that is less of a problem than the fact that American politicians do believe theirs, which reject compromise and negotiations in favor of the big stick. Whatever the future of Russia, as 2014 draws to a close, it is clear to anyone who looks beyond the New York Times that the world is increasingly weary of America’s bullying.

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The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’ may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

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Born in Philadelphia, I studied in Paris, became a French citizen by marriage, debuted at Agence France Presse in Rome, then, as Deena Boyer, followed Fellini’s creative process for The Two Hundred Days of ’81/2’. The proceeds from this book enabled me travel to Cuba to to interview Fidel Castro for a major French weekly, meeting with him again a week after the Kennedy assassination and several times in 1964 for a book, Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young, in which the other members of the government (including Che Guevara, Raul Castro and Celia Sanchez), tell in their own words why they made the revolution. My Cuba archive is on-line at Duke University.

In the seventies, I did graduate work in Global Survival, taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and was a speech writer in the Carter State Department, publishing an article on U.S.-Soviet relations in the in-house journal in 1976.

Returning to Paris in 1981, with assistance from the Centre National du Livre, I published Une autre Europe, un autre Monde, the only book that foresaw the reunification of Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union. I returned to Philadel-phia in 2000, and have been a contributor and senior editor at various on-line journals.

A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness hopes to change the way both seekers and skeptics look at good and evil - -and at the daunting problems of the 21st century. It shows that religious belief is not necessary to achieve serenity, but that awareness of the sacred as confirmed by modern science, is. It does this by viewing the world as a system and exploring what that means for the role of politics.

America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World is a primer for Americans and others who find the policies of successive US governments difficult to square with their image of the country and its founding documents. The decades I spent living on both sides of the Iron Curtain provided me with a unique awareness of America’s image abroad and of the mainstream media’s failure to convey news and ideas to the voters in whose name policies are carried out. References to work by other political writers illustrate little-known or forgotten features of American history that have contributed to the tragic face the country presents today.

Cuba 1964 provides the definitive answer to the question: “Was Fidel Castro a Communist before he carried out the revolution, or did he become one because of the way the United States reacted when he ousted pro-US dictator Fulgencio Batista? While following day by day events, I had extensive conversations with the men and women who had joined the Castro brothers as early as 1953 and were now members of the revolutionary government. Together with Fidel, Raul, Che and Celia Sanchez, they told me in their own words why and now they made the Revolution hat continues to inspire countries in Latin America and around the world. The text is illustrated with photographs from my black and white archive which can be seen on-line at Duke University.

Lunch with Fellini Dinner with Fidel: How did it happen that a fourteen year old American girl found herself living among the French in post-war Paris? The answer to that question also explains why I went on to live in half a dozen countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, becoming mutti-lingual, writing first about the cinema, then about ‘the big picture’ while raising two children, mostly on my own. A religious grandmother and a hedonistic lover accompanied me on a journal which has been both spiritual and political, and is illustrated by many photographs from my personal album.